Right place, right team

SportSouth had a camera crew embedded with Appalachian State
University’s football team since Aug. 1 and planned to air a 30-minute reality
show on the team’s training camp as part of its “Under the Lights” series later
this month. Then the Mountaineers won at Michigan on Sept. 1.

Appalachian State’s stunner spurs debate about the benefits
of small schools
moving to I-A, so why are
some
making the move while Appy stays put?

Within an hour after the upset, senior producer Steve Becker —
coincidentally a Michigan graduate — was outside Michigan Stadium, sitting on a
camera case, contemplating what his crew had just captured. Already, he had
received an e-mail from SportSouth general manager Jeff Genthner saying that
the show would be expanded to an hour.

This had to be video gold for a network that reaches 9 million
homes in a six-state footprint through the Southeast. Talk about being in the
right place at the right time. SportSouth’s cameras traveled with the team from
Boone, N.C. They were on the team’s chartered flight out of Johnson City, Tenn.
And they rode the team bus to the stadium. Cameras were running inside the
Appalachian State locker room before the game, at halftime and again after the
shocking win. The crew spent three to four days a week with the team through
training camp and even went to class with some of the players.

“We captured lightning in a
bottle,” Becker said. “My mind was racing in so many different directions after
the game. My alma mater had just been part of the biggest upset in college
football, but the producer side of me was thinking we had just documented
history. Now we get to tell the whole story of everything that led up to this
game.”

“Under the Lights: Appalachian State football — Date with
Destiny” will debut at 10 p.m. Saturday
on SportSouth, with another showing scheduled for 8 p.m. Sunday. Subsequent
showings will follow on SportSouth, FSN and likely the Big Ten Network, all of
which are News Corp. networks.

The wheels are already turning in Genthner’s mind about a
keepsake DVD.

The aftermath of
Appalachian State’s shocking 34-32 win at Michigan was felt from Ann Arbor to
Boone, the Mountaineers’ home in the northwest corner of North Carolina.

Many stores had sold out their inventory of Appalachian State
apparel by Tuesday of last week, just three days after the game, said Lewis
Hardy, president of Licensing Resource Group, the licensing agent for the
school. One store took an order of 250 shirts from a Michigan State alumni
association, and orders from Columbus, Ohio, home to Michigan’s fiercest
football rival, have been brisk as stores that service Ohio State fans look for
Appalachian State inventory.

The upset began a retail spree at Appalachian State
that surpassed its national title years.

“Stores are having record days,” Hardy said.

Hardy said demand has exceeded that from Appalachian State’s
consecutive Division I-AA national championships.

“We won’t have a report on royalties until October, but early
indications are that this is the national championship and then some,” Hardy
said. “The Michigan game is bigger” because more orders are coming from around
the country.

Samantha Stevens, director
of marketing and licensing at Appalachian State, said one Michigan State group
has requested permission to put the Mountaineers’ mark on a billboard as part
of a congratulatory message.

Of the printers who regularly produce Appalachian State
apparel, just one sought permission before the game to produce a T-shirt with
the score on it. That printer, based in Raleigh, about three hours from the
school, had shirts in Boone by 8 p.m. that night, Stevens said.

Sports Illustrated, which put Appalachian State on its cover
last week, also called the school’s bookstore and asked for space to sell SI
cover merchandise.

Of course, SportSouth never had any idea that its monthlong
stay with the Mountaineers would culminate with a win at Michigan. Becker and
producer Ray Goodrich simply had designs on a good story.

SportSouth periodically
follows college teams as part of its “Under the Lights” series, a
documentary-style reality show that typically chronicles a team’s preparation
for a game. Appalachian State’s training camp was chosen because SportSouth had
recently signed a deal with the Southern Conference to televise football,
basketball and other sports. The Mountaineers offered full access, and their
status as two-time national champs in the Football Championship Subdivision
(formerly I-AA) added to the story.

But when Appalachian State did the unthinkable, becoming the first
I-AA team to beat a ranked I-A team, No. 5 Michigan, the show took on a whole
new life.

“Viewers are going to get
to know these guys,” Goodrich said. “We’ve had them miked from the day they
reported for camp to the day they went to class to the trip to Michigan. We
earmarked several players that we’d really get to know and many of those
players played integral roles in the game. It sets you up so that you’re really
caring about these guys.”